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Published October 29, 2026

What’s a good iPhone widget for daily Japanese vocabulary?

Japanese widgets on the App Store mostly come in two kinds, and the right one depends on whether you study or only want to glance. If you study with flashcards, or want to, the pick is Moji - Learn Japanese Daily for iPhone: its widgets show the words in your own spaced-repetition queue, rotating every hour, put your streak and due count on the Lock Screen, and include a quiz you answer by tapping the widget itself. If you want a word to look at with no study app behind it, a word-of-the-day widget such as Kioku or Yumo is lighter and asks nothing of you.

We build Moji, so weigh that as you read. Every alternative below gets the case where it is the better choice.

AppWhat the widget showsFreePaid
Moji - Learn Japanese DailyYour due and next study words, hourly; streak, learned and due counts; an in-widget quizAll three widgets; quiz on your study path and kana decksPremium unlocks JLPT N5 to N1 quiz decks ($8.99/month or $49.99/year)
KiokuOne new word each morning: kanji, reading, meaningHiragana, katakana and JLPT N5 (about 670 words), one word a day$1.99/month, $9.99/year or $19.99 once: all levels, up to four words a day
YumoA JLPT word every few hours: kanji, reading, meaningA new word every 6, 12 or 24 hours; your first evening reviewPro: a new word every 1 to 4 hours and an evening review every night
Hourly KanaNew words through the day, plus scheduled word reminders7-day trialPaid access after the trial
Daily Japanese WidgetOne new word a day with meaning, furigana, romaji and audio, in 100+ themesFree downloadNot stated on the listing

Moji - Learn Japanese Daily’s three widgets: Word Flow, Today and Quiz

Moji’s widgets are windows onto the app’s study queue rather than a separate word list, so what you see on your phone is what your reviews are about to ask you.

Word Flow runs on the Home Screen in small and medium sizes and on the Lock Screen as a rectangular or inline widget. Every hour it shows another word from the front of your study queue, either one you are due to review or one of the next new words, with its reading and meaning. The small Home Screen size also draws the word’s pitch accent as a contour above the reading. It leaves out kana cards and grammar words such as bare particles, which make poor glance material on their own, and before you have studied anything it shows the start of the curated order. Tapping it opens that word in the app.

Today sits on the Lock Screen. The rectangular size shows three numbers: your streak, how many words you have learned, and how many reviews are due, and the due count climbs on its own as reviews come due through the day. The circular size shows the streak alone. Tapping it opens your reviews.

Quiz is a medium or large Home Screen widget that you play without opening the app. It shows a word and four meanings, you tap one, and the next question appears in place, with a counter for how many you have answered correctly in a row. On your study path, a longer run pulls in words further down the path instead of cycling the same few. You can set it to your study path, to hiragana or katakana (which quiz the reading, since a kana character has no meaning to choose), or to a JLPT level from N5 to N1. The study path and kana decks are free; the JLPT level decks need Moji Premium.

Why tie a widget to a review queue?

A word-of-the-day widget picks words from a level list on a timer. That is fine for exposure, and some learners want exactly that: something pleasant on the Lock Screen with no streak and no session attached.

The case for a widget attached to a scheduler is that the glance and the study session stop being separate things. The word on your Lock Screen is one your reviews are working on, the due count tells you when a two-minute session is worth opening, and the quiz lets you practise recall in the moments you would not open an app at all. Moji schedules those reviews with FSRS-6, covered in how Moji uses FSRS, and the reasoning behind small daily sessions is in learning Japanese 5 minutes a day.

The cost is that it assumes you study. The widgets are most useful when the queue behind them moves; without sessions, Word Flow keeps cycling the same set of words.

Choose Kioku if…

You want calm and nothing else. Kioku’s listing describes it plainly: a new word every morning, with no flashcards, no streaks and no notifications, in a quiet design built around Japanese typography. Its free tier covers hiragana, katakana and about 670 JLPT N5 words at one word a day, which is generous for a widget. Pro adds every JLPT level and up to four words a day.

Choose Yumo if…

You want the widget itself to set your pace. Yumo lets you choose how often a new JLPT word appears, every 6, 12 or 24 hours on the free tier and as often as every hour with Pro, and tapping a word opens audio and stroke-by-stroke writing. Its evening review gathers the words that crossed your Lock Screen that day. It is also the pick here if you want the interface in French, German or Spanish.

Choose Hourly Kana if…

You want a widget-first app that grows into a full course and you do not mind paying after a trial. Alongside the widgets and scheduled reminders, its listing describes a placement test, JLPT N5 to N1 vocabulary, handwriting and quizzes, Anki imports, iCloud sync, and an interface in 11 languages. Paid access is required after the 7-day trial.

Choose Daily Japanese Widget if…

The look matters to you. It shows one word a day with meaning, furigana, romaji and audio, filtered by JLPT level, across every widget size, and it ships over 100 themes plus a widget that shows today’s date in Japanese.

Which Moji is this?

Several apps share the name, and one of them also offers Lock Screen widgets. The widgets described on this page belong to Moji - Learn Japanese Daily by independent developer Huy Bui, App Store ID 6760421124. “Moji - Learn Japanese & Kanji” and “MOJi N5-Vocabulary for JLPT N5” are separate apps from other developers. More on who builds Moji is on the about page, and the wider field of iPhone study apps is ranked in the best iPhone app to learn Japanese.

If you want the widget that knows what you are studying, all three are free to add once the app is installed: Moji - Learn Japanese Daily is on the App Store.

Sources

Competitor details are from each app’s US App Store listing, checked in October 2026.